


Christine

by AHumanFemale



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Bickering, Fluff, M/M, Pain, Please Check the Archive Warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 01:45:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13602972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHumanFemale/pseuds/AHumanFemale
Summary: Rafael has an odd relationship with Sonny’s car.He doesn’t want to have a relationship at all.





	Christine

**Author's Note:**

> In light of what may or may not be happening tonight, I wanted to put this out there before I got sad and decided to delete it in my mourning. LOL It is painful, at least for me, and I really urge you to check the archive warnings before reading. 
> 
> Based on a headcanon developed by myself, Robin Hood, barbaxcarisi, and ships-to-sail. These lovely people have given me permission to use it for the purpose of this story and I am endlessly grateful to them for the encouragement and support. 
> 
> Enjoy, and I'm sorry.
> 
> xoxo, ahf.

**Christine**

  
  


Back in 1995, when Sonny was fifteen years old, he spent hours upon hours doing odd jobs around his neighborhood and that of his grandparents to earn enough money to buy himself a car.  He had not quite a thousand dollars in a plastic bag in his backpack, and when the fateful day came for him to make a purchase Dominick Sr. took him to the used car lot and only a single, solitary vehicle was less than a thousand dollars.

A 1981 Ford Crown Victoria.

It was pearl white nearly turned orange with rust and the interior was wine dark velvet with the occasional cigarette burn.  The radio didn’t work, the tires had been flat for half his lifetime, and no one was entirely sure you could get into the trunk or, frankly, if you even wanted to.  

Still, much to the surprise of his father, the car started.

It rolled over with a groan so deep and rattling that it shook the whole car and Sonny right along with it - skinny arms holding onto the wheel like it was going to fly off - and he grinned so wide Dominick Sr. couldn’t bear to tell him no.  

An hour later, title in hand and $889 dollars lighter, Sonny Carisi owned his first car.

His father’s name was on the title but the meaning was clear - the behemoth was Sonny’s responsibility, to be taken care of or junked on his own sweat and certainly on his own dime.  It was all Sonny devoted his time to over the next year - steaming the upholstery and sewing up tears where he could.  Patching where he couldn’t.  He bought new tires and new rims, which in that time wasn’t quite so expensive as it would have been now.  Late nights in the summer and short ones in the winter were spent with his father in the garage, learning the name of every switch and gear and button.  Every valve and gauge.  By the time he was sixteen and it was actually drivable, Sonny knew the Crown Vic better than anyone else on the planet.

That’s what he called it, by the way.

The Crown Vic.

Fitting, he thought, as it deserved the utmost respect.

The day he got his license his family had arranged a celebratory dinner - a Crown Vic-shaped cake made by his mother, a box of cassette tapes from his father.  Gina and Bella gave him an air-freshener for the ever-present scent of tobacco that somehow, no matter the cleaning or steaming or scrubbing, always seemed to stick around.  Teresa, for the  _ coup de gras _ , gifted Sonny a swinging pair of fuzzy dice the color of lime sherbert to hang over his rearview mirror.

It was one of the happiest nights of his life.

It was a night Rafael had heard about for years, particularly any time Rafael dared to speak out against the car.  

_ The Crown Vic is the coolest thing I’ve ever done, Rafi,  _ he’d say with a consternated expression.   _ You know I just about rebuilt her from the frame up, right?  I saved for years for that paint job!  If that ain’t worth the price of our parking spot, nothing else would be either. _

It wasn’t so much that Rafael objected to that car, per se.  It was that there was no need for it in Manhattan.  There was no need for a giant, gas-guzzling, environmental terror of a tank on overpasses and bridges and tolls meant for vehicles that didn’t require cranking and cajoling to lurch into motion again.  There was no need for a lumbering relic outside the precinct, where Sonny had to be careful to park significantly away from the rest of the fleet vehicles or the K-9’s would lose their minds trying to get into it.

“Let me change your mind,” Sonny said early one Sunday morning, before they lived together.  Rafael was hardly conscious and squinting against the sunlight in Sonny’s hair, body bare under the detective’s sheets.  “Come on, let’s go out.  We’ll get coffee and a bagel and we’ll hit the road for the afternoon.  Whaddaya say?”

“Whatever you want.”

It wasn’t what he’d planned to say, but it was always what he meant.

That was how he found himself, an hour and twenty minutes later, on the George Washington Bridge out of Washington Heights, out of Manhattan.  Just driving, Sonny insisted, as he pushed a cassette tape into the deck and Rafael was blasted with the quick guitar licks of something he didn’t recognize.  His neighborhood didn’t have much rock and roll in it, he thought as Sonny stared at him like he was crazy for not recognizing it.

“ _ Toys in the Attic _ ,” Sonny cried over the sound of air rushing through the windows, thrilled.  “Aerosmith!”

Joy.

The seats were uncomfortable, the fabric way too hot for the sunniest part of June, and now Rafael would be forced to have the modern equivalent of white noise pummeled into his ears.  The only thing he needed now was for Sonny to suggest a vacation off-roading somewhere in the rural South and he would die of happiness.  

Instead Sonny reached up and pushed his sunglasses up where they were creeping down his nose and pushed his flying hair out of his face.  Knowing Rafael was watching, he gave him a bright smile and lifted his hands to bat the fuzzy dice.  They swung, to and fro, jumping on their thin strings while Rafael stared at him pointedly.

“Happy?” he asked and Sonny laughed, lowering a hand to rest on Rafael’s thigh.

“Yeah, I am,” he replied and smiled wider.  “If those dice are swinging, I’m happy.”

“Oh good.  Like a dog’s tail.”

Sonny only laughed harder.

 

**…**

 

“Stop calling her that!”

“Then tell  _ her  _ to stop trying to kill me.”

“She’s not doing anything to you!  It’s not like she chooses to park on ice or when to close a door or when the seat adjustment lever decides to stop working.”

“Oh, good!” Rafael cried as they pulled up in front of Sonny’s parents’ house, the backseat loaded with Christmas gifts, “So it’s not Christine trying to kill me, it’s you!”

“I can fix the stupid seat lever,” Sonny responded sharply.  “It won’t happen again.  Not that getting thrown on your back will kill you, as I’m pretty sure it hasn’t for the past two years.”

“Excuse me?!”

“You heard me,” Sonny said and turned the car off, climbing out of the car and forcing Rafael to clamber out to keep listening to Sonny insult him.  “Or have you forgotten last night?  Or this Sunday?  Or the Thursday morning before that?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this had turned into an opportunity for you to pat yourself on the back,” Rafael said as they both collected armfuls of presents from the back and slammed the doors simultaneously.  They met eyes over the stupid roof of that stupid, murderous car, and Rafael wondered how he’d managed to fall so completely in love with a car-worshiping  _ idiot _ .  

They walked silently, side by side, up the stone path.  Steps in sync, breath billowing out into steam as they approached the house in front of them.  Sonny reached out to ring the doorbell and then turned to look at Rafael from the corner of his eye.

“You’re being a drama queen and taking it out on the Crown Vic.”

Rafael gaped.

“ _ Christine  _ will just have to deal with it,” he whispered harshly, one eye on the door.  “Oh, wait!  She is, in fact, not a  _ she  _ who will be dealing with anything because  _ she  _ is an inanimate object without feelings!”

“Spoken like a man who wants to walk home,” Sonny said as they stood shoulder to shoulder at his parents’ door.  

“What did you say?!” 

The door opened, Tessa behind it with her favorite Christmas sweater and a cup of coffee, and they both smiled.

“Merry Christmas, Ma!” Sonny cried and let himself be pulled forward into a hug and a kiss on both cheeks.  The treatment bestowed equally on Rafael, who glared at Sonny over his mother’s shoulder.  

_ This isn’t over _ , Rafael promised him wordlessly.

Sonny smirked.

_ Good. _

 

**…**

 

If sitting in Christine was uncomfortable on a good day, riding in the thing was hell in a tux.

They were coming back from a charity gala - praising NYPD, and Sergeant Carisi was the pride and joy of the new initiative for LGBT cops - and Rafael had been forced, so far, to remove his jacket, loosen his bowtie, and ceaselessly rearrange himself on the hard velvet bench seat.  

Sonny looked perfect, of course.  And perfectly comfortable, since these seats had long since molded themself to the shape of his perfect Italian ass.  He was in uniform, dressed in black with his hat situated in the seat between them.  He was clean shaven, golden hair shot through with silver and combed artfully back from his face.  Gorgeous didn’t even begin to cover Sonny Carisi, and the reminder of it had him shucking the seatbelt as they pulled into their building’s designated parking space.  

“Come here,” Rafael murmured after unbuckling, eyes on the smooth expanse of skin beneath his shaved jaw.  Hand on the seat, pushing his hat out of the way.  “You looked so good tonight.”

“Yeah?  You’re one to talk,” Sonny told him and allowed him closer, under the fold of one long arm as they pulled to a stop in their space.  “I stared at you all night.  Chatting up all those donors, being charming.  I couldn’t wait to have you back in my bed.”

Rafael mouthed a wet kiss to Sonny’s throat, running his palm up Sonny’s thigh.

“Why wait until we’re in bed?”

Sonny pulled back far enough that Rafael could see his expression - something that was as close to  _ scandalized  _ as he’d ever seen him.

“What?”

“That is for  _ other cars _ ,” Sonny practically hissed.  “Not the Crown Vic.”

“I don’t think Christine minds,” Rafael scoffed.  “In fact, I have a suspicion she’s not even sentient.”

“He didn’t mean that, baby,” Sonny cooed, rubbing his hand over the dash.  Rafael rolled his eyes, more than capable of feeling exasperated over the pleasant buzz of champagne and arousal singing in his blood.  “He didn’t mean that at all.”

“Didn’t I?”

“Come on, Rafi,” Sonny cajoled, running his fingers through the hair at Rafael’s temples and kissing him soundly.  “Let’s go inside, huh?  I need more room than this to do what I really want to do to you…”

The soft words, his kiss, did their job.

They spilled, honeyed, from his lips and Rafael had no choice but to let his heart thrum wildly in his chest and give Sonny everything he wanted.

“Yes,” he murmured against Sonny’s mouth, “Yes.”

“Follow me,” Sonny said, pupils dilated with want in the low light as he opened his door.  “I believe I made you a promise earlier about undressing you with my teeth…”

 

**…**

 

“You’re going to take care of her, right?”

“Sonny-”

“No, Raf, listen to me,” Sonny started and Rafael rolled his eyes for the dozenth time in one morning.  “She’s getting on in years, alright?  You’ve gotta take care of her.”

“That car is younger than both of us.”

“Yeah, but she’s a car,” he replied, shrugging.  “She’s younger than us in people years but in car years she’s, like, eighty.”

“Are you even listening to the words coming out of your mouth?”

“She’s got half a tank so she’s going to need more by the time I get back.”

“How long are you going undercover?” Rafael asked incredulously, “And why do you seem to think I’m going to use half a tank of gas?”

“Captain said it shouldn’t be more than a week or two but you know how it goes,” Sonny answered.  “And I know you’re using half a tank of gas because she needs to go a few miles every other day or her joints lock up.”

“Dear God, you think she has joints.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Just… be careful.  And take care of yourself, please,” Sonny said, slinging his duffle over his shoulder and pulling Rafael in for kiss.  “Eat, please.  Drink something that isn’t caffeinated or alcoholic.  Sleep more than five hours.”

“Now you’re being purposefully outlandish,” Rafael teased and kissed him back.  “I’ll be fine.  Christine will be fine.  You worry about yourself and get your ass back to me.”

Sonny’s eyebrows waggled.

“That all you’re worried about?”

“I have priorities,” Rafael teased, shrugging and pushing him gently toward the door of their apartment.  “Now go.”

Sonny was gone for nine days.

Nine days with no contact, nine days with only minimal check-ins with Olivia to let her know he was safe.  

Rafael originally had no plans to follow Sonny’s car care regiment but on the sixth night, nearing one o’clock in the morning, Rafael couldn’t sleep.  He’d tossed and turned and had scotch and hot tea and still he was awake, staring at the empty space where Sonny should have been.  It was before he’d even realized what he was doing that he’d thrown on a coat and his shoes, Sonny’s car keys in hand.

Christine was in their space, immaculate.  Gleaming snow white in the overhead lights of the parking garage.  Bright, glittering.  Rafael climbed behind the wheel before he had a chance to talk himself out of it, closing the door behind him and locking them.  The interior was silent and dark and if it weren’t so late and he weren’t so tired he might have wondered what in the hell he’d expected to find.

“I’m not driving you,” Rafael told the car, as though it were something that could listen.  “I know that’s what you’re used to, but Sonny’s gone and I’m not about to bow to your whim the same way he does.”

He touched the steering wheel, the cool vinyl smooth under his fingers.

Sonny had touched it last.

Sonny had been gone for six days.

The key slid into the ignition with hardly a catch, well oiled over its forty-some years of life.  The engine turned over with a long groan - the same one Sonny had always described her making all those years ago, in that used car lot on Staten Island - and Rafael winced.  As someone whose knees were starting to pop when he got out of bed, he felt a flicker of sympathy for her.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said and touched his toe to the gas.  “Here, let’s get you warmed up.”

The engine revved a few times, getting easier with every rotation.

“There, that’s not so bad,” he soothed.  “I’ll get the hang of this.”

He flipped on the radio and it whined, somehow situated between stations.  

“I know,” he said softly.  “I miss him too.”

He sat there for a time, revving the engine and letting Christine warm up after almost a week of neglect.  It was Sonny’s earnest voice in his head that had him putting her into reverse, flipping headlamps on.

“Come on, old girl,” he whispered, “Let’s see what kind of trouble we can get into.”

Remarkably little, he found out as he drove around their block a few times.  He kept the radio low, kept his hands on the wheel.  It had been several years since he’d been forced behind the wheel of a car but he managed.  At least until an hour had passed and he pulled back into their spot, completely underestimating how big Christine really was until he heard the awful scrape of metal on metal as he dragged her tail end down the brand new hybrid in the space next to her.  

The scratch was five inches long but bared the dark metal frame under the pearlescent paint and Rafael thought he might have heard Sonny bellow in agony from somewhere across the city.  He apologized to Christine, rubbed a hand over her trunk, and promised to fix it first thing in the morning because it was a Saturday and he’d have nothing else to keep him from thinking about how much he needed Sonny to come home.  Then he went upstairs, crawled back into bed, and slept almost eight hours.  He dreamed about trying to find the perfect color of white and only coming up with bright, guilty red.

His mother’s nail polish did the trick.

Or so he thought, until Sonny came home three days later.  

He’d come home, kissed Rafael until he couldn’t breathe, and took him to bed.  Hours later he wanted to take Rafael to dinner, wanted to wear his own clothes and drive his own car, and Rafael had frozen so completely that a blind man several city blocks away would have known he’d done something wrong.  Much less a trained police officer with a sergeant’s shield, who suddenly looked like Rafael had confessed to forgetting where he placed their child.

“Rafael,” he said slowly, “What did you do?”

“I-”

“What did you do?!”

“Sonny, listen-”

He hadn’t said another word.  Just threw on whatever clothes he could get his hands on first and rushed down to the parking garage, zeroing in instantly on the small scratch repaired with nail polish.  He makes a noise that Rafael would have sworn was a wounded animal howling his goodbye and fell to his knees, touching at the scratch and  _ apologizing to the car _ .

“We’ll fix it, okay?” he said, rubbing his fingers over the length of it.  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.  Rafael was a terrible dad, wasn’t he?  Don’t worry, we can make this better.”

Rafael rolled his eyes so hard he felt something pull.

“Oh, for the love of-”

“I told him, didn’t I?  I told him to take care of you.  But no, he decides to take you out to a frigging monster truck rally while I’m gone.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“Oh, and you scratching Christine is fine?!” 

He opened his mouth to argue it further but something dinged in his head and instead he felt a slow smirk stretching the corner of his mouth.

“What was that?” he asked, stepping closer.  “What did you call her?”

Sonny set his mouth in a fine line.

“I’m picking up your bad habits.”

“Or the name suits her better than her make and model and you’re finally seeing the light,” Rafael surmised and now it was Sonny’s turn to scoff and roll his eyes.

He forgave him eventually, because of course he did.  He got the scratched fixed - for real this time - and Rafael had to listen to him apologize to the car for a solid week before it finally faded away.  Still, he never heard Sonny call her the Crown Vic ever again.

She was Christine.

 

**…**

 

Christine took them everywhere.

To parties, to baseball games.

To weekend getaways upstate when they both managed to score the same few days off.  

To movies, to shows.

Away from fights when one of them needed to blow off steam.

Christine took Rafael to the hospital at four o’clock in the morning, Sonny behind the wheel, when the emergency room staff called to alert him of his mother’s heart attack.  She waited in the hospital parking garage for long hours while Rafael paced the cardiology ward’s ICU, being told over and over again that she was stable and there was nothing to do but wait until the stent was placed.

Christine brought Lucia home several weeks later, heart-shaped pillow in her arms, while Sonny helped her down into the car and showed her how to fasten the seatbelt without pulling at the incision down her chest.  Rafael looked over his shoulder the entire time, looking for signs of pain or discomfort, but there were none.  Christine drove smooth and steady, a tank protected on all sides.  An old battle axe perfectly suited to the one in the backseat, who spared the time to tell Sonny how beautiful she looked before bringing her up to their apartment to stay until she’d healed enough to go back to her own.

Sonny had only smiled and agreed.

Late one February, when ice slicked the roads and it probably wasn’t a good idea to be driving, Christine took them on a Sunday drive that was to be their last for a while.  Rafael was announcing his candidacy for the bench and all his time would be devoted to running, to winning.  Their Sunday drives would be put to the side for a little while, until the election.  It was something Rafael found himself mourning - a personal luxury sacrificed already to a campaign that had yet to really begin.

It was that simple fact that encouraged Rafael to enjoy it.

He settled into his spot on Christine’s seat and felt her mold to his lower back, more supportive now than it had ever been years before.  He listened as Sonny dug through the cassette box and picked a longstanding favorite, a tape Rafael had grown to love.  He had a favorite track on Toys in the Attic now but he would have to wait for other songs first, the all too familiar strains of guitar filling the cabin.  

The dice swung, the music played, and the man he loved was happy.

Sonny laughed, put his hand on Rafael’s thigh, and Rafael rested his arm on the door, where the sunlight was slanting in and Christine’s interior was warm.

He smiled all afternoon.

 

**…**

 

Almost a year later, Rafael made his way to her with a thick sweater around his shoulders and an ache in his bones that had nothing to do with the cold.  He was tired.  Tired of the people coming in and out of their home, tired of the pomp and circumstance, tired of behaving formally and professionally.

He reached for the driver’s door first but instantly felt how unnatural it was.  Pulling his hand back, Rafael circled the car and let himself in on the passenger side.  Christine welcomed him with warm yellow light flicking on above his head and with the solid metal slam of her door as he locked himself inside.  The cabin was silent, then.  Nothing but the sound of his breathing as he took in his first drink of solitude in close to three weeks.

“I’m sorry it’s been so long,” he tells her, running a hand over his door.  “It’s, uh… it’s been a long couple of weeks.  Never-ending, in fact.”

He cleared his throat.

“I know Sonny always tells me to drive you every other day and I’m sorry,” he said and shook his head.  

He was talking to a car.

He was talking to  _ Sonny’s  _ car.

“Sonny, uh…”  He scrubbed a hand over his face, felt his eyes burn.  “Sonny won’t be able to drive you anymore.  He’s- he’s gone.”

The laugh he let out was watery and it was only to keep himself from sobbing.

“He didn’t check in with Olivia that night, the last night I drove you,” Rafael told her, closing his eyes.  “He didn’t check in again at all.  They found him the next morning, he was… he was gone already.”

_ Gone,  _ as though someone hadn’t taken him.

As though he’d just disappeared.

“That was a while ago now and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.  I couldn’t… I couldn’t find the time.  I couldn’t make myself do it, not with everything else happening.  The people.  God, the people.  They’re everywhere.”  He sniffed, pressed the heel of his hand to the bridge of his nose.  “Telling me to eat, to drink, to rest when I can’t imagine doing any of those things ever again.  When I don’t  _ want  _ to, not without him.”

Rafael took some deep breaths, focused on Christine’s dash.  The gleam of the hood through the windshield, her white paint as pristine as it always was.

“You still have a home,” he assured her.  “You’ll always have a home here, with me.  I’ll do whatever you need.  It won’t be Sonny but… but I’ll make sure it’s someone who knows what they’re doing.  Someone who’ll treat you well.  I’ll pay the parking fee.  Until the day I die, you will be right here.  Where he wanted you.”

Rafael reached out, smoothed his shaking fingertips over the steering wheel.  He felt a jolt,  a heady thrill, as though it were a living thing.

Sonny had touched it last.

Sonny had been gone for eighteen days.

Sonny wasn’t coming back.

“I promise not to drive you,” he said, voice breaking.  “I’ll get Rollins to do it, maybe.  She’s better at it than I am.  But you’ll… you’ll be taken care of, I promise.”

The tears came on quickly, as dear to him now as anything else he had left of the man he loved.  He cried until his stomach clenched, until his heaving breaths had fogged the windows.  He cried until he couldn’t anymore and he slept, deep and dreamless with his head on the headrest and his hand resting on the bench next to him.  Where Sonny would always meet him with his own hand, would lace their fingers together and bring them to his lips.  

There was so much of Sonny in her.

In every stitch, in every glint of light.  

When he woke it was with the thick haze of delirium that had greeted him every morning for eighteen days.  A fog he had to swim through, denial humming under his skin, because surely this wasn’t his life.  Surely he hadn’t lost everything he’d ever loved.  It was all a dream, an awful nightmare he’d wake up from if only he could make it through the insulation that surrounded him.

He never did.

It was never a dream, never a nightmare.

This was it.

This time he blinked awake, groggy, but his eyes were instantly drawn to movement in his periphery.  

The fuzzy dice, he realized as he woke.

Swinging.

Without a window open, without a breeze or another person in the car to set them in motion.  Rafael watched them, hypnotized, as his heart clawed its way back into his throat and the tears started anew.

The man he loved was happy.

For the first time in weeks, Rafael laughed.


End file.
